


don't shed a tear for me

by Bubbles43296



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jack is not a good person, but it's more with them as friends, but with a lot more hurt and a lot less comfort, hoo boy this took me a while to write, if it makes you cry then I have done well, if you just feel sad/worried I have also done well, it could be rhys/vaughn if you want, or AI, set during the opening titles of episode 3, whatever, when they're travelling in the caravan, y'know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 10:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8010673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bubbles43296/pseuds/Bubbles43296
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rhys has an incident in the caravan, the group decide to take drastic measures to make sure it doesn't happen again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rhys woke up to the sound of metal clanging together, twisting & scraping as the harsh Pandoran winds battered it. Wearily, he opened his eyes, wincing as the sunlight hit his unprotected eyeballs in full force. Man, his head hurt. What had happened last night?

As he shuffled back to the shadows of the small, cell-like room he was in, he distantly remembered being in the caravan with Vaughn, Sasha & Fiona, talking aimlessly, and then…

Rhys blinked in confusion, brows furrowing as he struggled to remember what had happened, only to find that he couldn’t.

Suddenly, the door creaked open, jerking Rhys out of his confusion. Had they been kidnapped? Was everyone okay? What was going on? He looked up to face his captor, ready to play the invincible her and find out where his friends were (which would probably only end in disaster), only to see-

“Vaughn?”

The small accountant blinked in surprise, eyes widening and breath hitching in shock. Rhys would have laughed, would have jumped for joy. Hell, he would even have sung a full blown musical, knowing that at least one of his friends was alive and well, if not for the fact that Vaughn’s expression had quickly become one of steely determination.

“Vaughn?” Rhys tried again, “Bro? Bro, is-is everything okay?”

In response, Vaughn narrowed his eyes, scrutinising his (possibly former) best friend with a gaze that could probably kill, given the right conditions. A long, palpable moment of silence passed between the two, with neither making a sound, before, finally, Vaughn spoke.

“Tell me something only y-only _Rhys_ would know.”

Rhys’ eyebrows quickly flew up his forehead. What was going on? And why would Vaughn think that he wasn’t… himself? He moved to stand, taking his organic hand from the floor, and promptly falling on his backside. Bewildered, he turned to look at his traitorous metal limb, only to find that it had disappeared.

“Where’d my arm go?”

“Just- answer the question.”

“Uh-um, well… One time, when we were kids, we raided your mom’s closet, and we put on her makeup and clothes and-well, everything.”

There was yet another long moment, during which Rhys presumed that Vaughn was surveying the facts. At one point, it got so quiet that Rhys could’ve sworn he could hear someone on an old and rather staticy radio somewhere nearby. However, his attention was rapidly dragged away from the sound when Vaughn’s expression lifted slightly from his solemnity to hope.

“Rhys?”

“The one and only.”

The smaller of the two slumped in relief and quickly wrapped his much taller and very confused best friend in a hug.

“Oh god, thank fuck it’s you, Rhys, we were so worried, _I_ was so worried,” Vaughn muttered into Rhys’ chest.

“Uh, Vaughn?”

“Yeah?”

“What… happened? Last night?”

“You mean you don’t-you don’t remember?”

Rhys shook his head in response. Vaughn’s relief quickly seemed to melt away into grim solemnity once again as he extracted himself from his friend’s arm.

“Okay, um. What’s the last thing you remember?” Vaughn asked, taking a step back from Rhys.

“Well, we were talking in the caravan about some really random stuff.”

“…That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus.” Vaughn rubbed a hand over his face.

“Vaughn?” Rhys was starting to get worried now, a note of concern entering his voice, “What happened?”

“You-you just collapsed all of a sudden, like you’d been… I dunno, switched off or something, and then-” Vaughn took a deep breath, “You sat up again, but something was seriously wrong. Your ECHO eyes was yellow, and you were talking weirdly, and then you…”

“…What?”

The accountant was silent for a moment, contemplating his words.

“You attacked Fiona.”

“… I what?!” Rhys cried in utter disbelief. He couldn’t imagine hurting anyone in their small group on purpose.

“We think that it was Jack. He must’ve taken control of your body somehow. We took your arm off in case it happened again.”

“But then how did you guys-”

“Sasha hit you with a gun.”

Well, that explained the serious headache, at least.

“Well, now you know it’s me and not Jack, can we go?” Rhys sighed, gesturing at the wall behind him with his thumb.

The small grin that Vaughn had had on his face briefly fled, as if he had just remembered something, leaving him serious, and if Rhys could read his friend’s emotions correctly, slightly sad, but it was replaced before he could check.

“Yeah, bro, everything’s gonna be fine.” Vaughn said, trying to be reassuring, although his voice cracked slightly as he spoke the words.

Rhys had been moving towards the door, but stopped dead once he heard Vaughn’s voice, turning back.

“Are you okay, bro?”

Vaughn started to rub at his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m-I’m,” He tried to go on, but then he gave up, starting to just outright sob, “No. no, I’m not.”

Rhys immediately rushed back to his best friend, hugging him as well as he could with only one arm. Vaughn got his arms around the taller of the two as soon as possible, and for a second, Rhys thought he felt something cold and hard brush against his back, but he quickly brushed it off as a figment of his imagination, ignoring it. By now, Vaughn had nuzzled his face into the crook of Rhys’ neck and had begun whispering a string of phrases and words unintelligible to Rhys, sobbing all the while.

“It’s gonna be okay, Vaughn.” The taller man said, rubbing small circles in his friend’s back in an attempt to soothe him, “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

A small nod paired with a long, shuddering breath was his only response. Rhys sighed, about to free Vaughn from the one-armed embrace, and-

Something stabbed into his back.

Rhys gasped in shock, staggering forward, and further into Vaughn’s arms.

The pain was almost excruciating, and he would’ve screamed if not for the mind-numbing realisation that his best friend had just stabbed him, quite literally, in the back.

Rhys was confused more than anything, and he would’ve asked Vaughn why he had done it, but then he felt a hot liquid welling up in his mouth, threatening to bubble over his lips. He slumped even further forward, legs growing weak from lack of blood, so close now that he could hear Vaughn’s previously incoherent mumblings for himself: a string of apologies and long explanations.

And suddenly, Rhys understood.

After Jack had taken control, Vaughn had told Fiona & Sasha about his presence in Rhys’ head. The sisters were furious, of course, and the only logical solution to them, it seemed, was to kill Rhys. Jack couldn’t survive without him, after all, so it had made sense to them. Vaughn had insisted that he should do it. He knew the man better than the other two, and he didn’t want to lose his best friend since childhood without him having some form of comfort in his final moments.

Black started to fill the edges of Rhys’ vision, and he felt a warm liquid dripping onto his shirt. He looked down, expecting to see a steadily growing patch of, and instead finding Vaughn, his face pressed to Rhys’ chest, still clutching his back, and sobbing.

Despite what he had just done, Rhys wanted to comfort Vaughn, to reassure him, and so, breaths becoming fewer and farther between, he let himself fall even further. His mouth was close enough to Vaughn’s ear now that he could whisper and still be heard well.

As his vision became darker, and heartbeat grew slower, Rhys managed to breathe out a few final words, simply hoping that Vaughn would understand.

“I’m… sorry,” He croaked, tears beginning to leak out of his eyes as the enormity of the situation started to overwhelm him, “It’s not… not your fault.”

Vaughn didn’t respond with words, only crying harder.

With great difficulty, Rhys pushed off of his friend’s shoulder, trying to comfort him with a smile one last time, before Vaughn pulled him close, latching onto his clothes like they were a lifeline, and still sobbing.

Weakly, he forced his eyes open, gazing out towards the horizon, and at the last Pandoran sunset he would lay eyes on.

_This_ , he thought, eyelids drooping closed, _this wasn’t such a bad way to die_.

 


	2. Epilogue

Vaughn was staring at Rhys’ body laid in front of him. He looked so peaceful, like he was just sleeping, but Vaughn knew better, knew that his friend’s heart wasn’t beating, that he wasn’t breathing. Vaughn took a deep, shuddering breath and looked down at his bloodied hands, fighting back tears.

He had held Rhys for several hours after-after it had happened, wailing, screaming and crying in consecutive bursts. At first, he hadn’t realised that the taller of the two was gone, and he’d kept blubbing into his friend’s ragged & blood soaked vest. Eventually, he had looked up and… noticed, and for an hour or so, all he could do was scream Rhys’ name, begging him not to be dead.

Vaughn’s breath hitched as the word flashed through his head. _Dead._ He turned to face the horizon, avoiding making eye contact with the body of his friend.

He didn’t see the smallest twitch of a finger.

He didn’t hear the whirring of an ECHO eye activating.

He didn’t notice the former corpse sit up with an evil grin plastered on its face.

“Aw, man,” It groaned loudly, jerking Vaughn out of his reverie, “feels good to back!”

Vaughn could only stare dumbfounded at his friend. He was sure that Rhys was dead, so how was this-how was it possible?

“R-Rhys?” Vaughn tried after a moment, swallowing back his tears.

In response, it simply laughed to the point of tears. “Oh, that’s a good one. _Rhys?_ Listen, kiddo, you killed Rhys, don’tcha remember? Or maybe you don’t, in which case, lemme spell it out for ya. Your buddy, good old Rhys here,” It gestured at the body, “is dead. D-E-A-D. Dead with a capital D. Honestly, it’s a goddamned miracle that _I_ survived. Good thing ya didn’t stick that knife in the kid’s brain or whatever, huh?”

At first, Vaughn had simply been confused, but as the… thing in Rhys’ body went on, a look of absolute horror began to grow on Vaughn’s face.

“…Jack?”

“ _FINALLY_ , he gets it, good job kid. You can have a prize for it when you get me the other arm.” Rhy-no, Jack, patted his shoulder, like Vaughn was his best friend in the whole wide world.

Vaughn stood frozen, with only one thought in his mind. _It hadn’t worked_. He had _killed_ his best friend for _absolutely **nothing**_.

“No.” He hissed through gritted teeth.

“No?”

“I am not going to get Rhys’ goddamned arm for you so that you can use him like a sack of fucking skag shit, you asshole.”

Rhy-Jack raised an eyebrow. “Okay, so you’re feisty, huh? Well, cupcake, I gotta tell you something,” His hand quickly shot out, grabbing hold of Vaughn’s exposed neck and squeezing ever so slightly, “If you don’t go and grab that arm, I might just have to kill you, and you wouldn’t want that, now would you?” He said, a grin slowly growing across his face.

Vaughn narrowed his eyes. There was no way in hell that he’d help jack. Rapidly losing the ability to breathe, he sucked in a deep breath, forcing two words out.

“Fuck… you.”

Jack was silent for a moment, eyes wide as he processed the rejection, until his expression became nonchalant and he shrugged.

“Suit yourself.”

And then he squeezed tighter, and tighter, until eventually, everything went black.

The king was back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! Please leave comments and/or kudos if you enjoyed it!!!


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